Over the many decades my company has been studying the link between people practices and performance, we’ve seen a common trait among low-performing, non-agile, slow-to-change companies: talent hoarding. This is the practice of allowing managers to keep their top performers from moving anywhere else in the company.
Let Your Top Performers Move Around the Company
It’s a critical way to retain talent and upskill your workforce.
August 20, 2021
Martin Poole/Getty Images
Summary.
As a manager, it’s human nature to want to hang on to the superstars in your group, department, or division. But ultimately, that’s detrimental to the organization and to the individuals involved. Multiple studies on talent mobility show that actively moving employees into different roles is one of the most underutilized, yet most effective, development and cultural enhancement techniques in companies today. In fact, research has shown that high-performance organizations are twice as likely to emphasize talent mobility versus low-performance companies. Building a culture of mobility is a trait of very healthy organizations, and the benefits are clear. Cross-functional collaboration increases, departmental cooperation is enhanced, innovation improves, and companies begin working more as one cohesive team instead of separate fiefdoms.